


The Queen of Hearts

by carryonstarkid



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: "She talks a lot for a poker player.", F/M, Smart People Playing Stupid Games, Those Three Little Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 18:36:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10859724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carryonstarkid/pseuds/carryonstarkid





	The Queen of Hearts

Everyone at this table does the math in their heads, except, as far as he can tell, for her. As far as he can tell she’s not doing the math at all.

And, well, that’s the thing about growing up in a statistically improbable household where everyone at the kitchen table has an IQ over 115—they’re all cheaters.  Card-counting, odds-playing, cheating-cheat cheaters.  Scott’s got the odds rolling around in his head like a pair of dice, trying to guess which side they’ll land on.  John’s got the whole deck laid out in his mind’s eye, some sort of overly complex matrix that lets him play the game three steps ahead of everyone else.  Virgil folds within the first three seconds and Alan doesn’t even look at his cards before he calls.

But Penelope—she’s not doing the math.

Which isn’t to say that she _couldn’t_ do the math.  She’s no stranger to playing the odds.  Of their current company, Penelope’s probably going to have the best math, the quickest math, but that’s the thing.  She isn’t doing it.  She doesn’t play the math.

Gordon’s never really cared much for the math himself.  The numbers are fine—he _gets_ the numbers.  It’s just that they don’t come easy to him, like it does for the rest of them.  Math is okay, but he’s always been better at history—dates, years, amendments, populations.  Those are his numbers.  Probabilities and statistics always make sense on the surface, until the numbers turn more into theory and get all muddled up in his head.  It feels sticky, getting into the odds, like he can’t quite make the Ace count for all its worth.

And anyways, there’s more to poker than the math.

It’s in his gut.  He’s not sure how he knows it, but he does.  It’s not math, it’s intuition, because the fact of the matter is that Scott’s got a shit hand, but he’s gonna call anyways, and John’s got a long shot for a flush, so long as Alan doesn’t have the Queen, but Alan does have the queen, because he’s tipping his chair back on two legs, simultaneously at ease and on edge.  ‘Course, maybe it’s a Jack, or maybe it's the King, or maybe it’s even the Ace, but it’s the Queen, because that’s just how these things work.

Anyone’s guess what Penelope has, because Penelope’s smiling, but Gordon’s pretty sure she’s just smiling at him.  And not even in the way he _wants_ her to—that way she does when she’s just caught his eye, when she’s halfway across a dressed up ballroom, willing him to leave with her.  Escape with her.  Run away with her.  Or even in that way she sometimes smiles when he catches her, on those warm summer afternoons, staring at his own mundanity like she’s never seen such an adventure before.  No, no, no.  This is a much crueler smile—good fuckin’ luck, this smile says, because she knows how to play without the math.

Scott kicks Alan’s chair back onto all fours, landing with a deep _clack_.  “Call,” he says.

“Hmm,” says John.  “Bold move.”

“The chair?” asks Scott.

“The call.”

“Recount your cards, Johnny.  I know my odds.”

“Sure.  But I know your hand—”

“Gentlemen, if I may interject,” says Penelope from across the table.  She flicks the corner of her cards with a single manicured finger, like some sort of amateur she falsely claims to be.  “What is the exchange rate between Chips Ahoy and Oreo?”

“Three Chips Ahoy to one Oreo,” the entire table answers.

“Ah,” she says, and what she says next is a game-changer—in the truest meaning of the word.  It’s out of nowhere, no signs, no strings attached, and it’s all Gordon can do not to choke on his own card sense.  “Well in that case, I see your four Oreos and I raise to eight.”

What the sweet  _fuck_.

You don’t just _raise_ four Oreos.  Nobody _raises_ four Oreos for anything.  The last time someone doubled the number of Oreos in the pot, it was Alan, and he was nine, and he was just learning how to play.  They’d even let him take two of the Oreos back after he’d realized what a terrible, _horrible_ mistake he’d made.  She’s bluffing.  She’s _totally_ bluffing.

But the smile is a grin now, and there’s something.   _Something_.

The round goes quick after that—John folds.  Alan tentatively calls.  It’s not even Scott’s turn yet, but he tosses his cards face down and folds prematurely.  It comes to Gordon.  There’s a chance that if Gordon were a smarter man, he’d pay attention to the math.  He’d look at Scott’s odds, and John’s count.  He’d look at Alan’s caution and think about all the ways the math tells him to pull out now, while he still can.

Except he’s looking at Penelope—really, honestly looking at her, beyond what he can see.  It’s easy to find her tells, because she doesn’t have any.  It’s easy to think that her smile is her poker face—and a bad one, at that—but it’s so much more.  There’s something in the way she _is,_ something in the way she _feels_.  

He rolls up his sleeves.  “Yeah.  Lemme raise two.”

“Call,” she says, not missing a beat.

Alan folds.

“Raise two more,” says Gordon.

“Call, and raise another three.”

“Call.”

Huh.  Maybe she’s not bluffing.

And for a moment there’s no one else in the room.  For a moment it’s just her, and the way she radiates red.  The way the light catches her just right, every last curve covered in shadow—nose, cheeks, bold, bright lips, all of it outlined by all the secrets she keeps in the cards.  She’s not playing the math.  She doesn’t need to.  She just needs to play him.

He’s never felt this exposed, playing cards.  The best thing about poker is that it’s the one game he always wins.  He’s shit at Clue, too damn impatient for Monopoly.  They don’t even play Risk anymore, because John always wins and, furthermore, John is a very, _very_ sore winner—but poker?  Put five cards in his hands, and Gordon can make a Two of Clubs look like a goddamn _prize_.  It’s the one game—the one _time_ , even—when Gordon being _Gordon_ is the best thing he can be.

And he feels like she’s _there_ , like she’s been there the whole time, like she can see right fucking through him.

Because the math is off the table, and this is what she does.  She _reads_  people.  Poker faces are her profession, and every last part of her makes him want to jump up and do the unexpected—to dance, to scream, to slide across the table, Oreos flying, and kiss her in the heat of passion— _something_ that will put the odds back in his favor.

But of course, such acts would only make him more obvious.  And so he picks up a Chips Ahoy—chump change in his pile—and takes a bite.  It is with a stuffed cheek and crumbs on his lips that he says, “Your move, P.”

“Is that _really_ your attempt at bluffing, darling?” she says  “I’ve played poker in Monte Carlo during the height of the busy season, you’re going to have to be far more impressive.”

She talks a lot, for a poker player.  “Mhmm.  Make the call, Pen.”

“Hmm,” she says, counting her cookies and tossing them in.  “I think we both know where this is going.  We ought to at least make a quick game out of it.  I’m all in.”

He laughs.  “Penelope?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

The room stills, and suddenly everyone around them is running a whole new kind of math through their heads.  Three little words that roll right off of his tongue, not quite a surprise, but certainly not planned.  But anyways he doesn’t regret saying them, sounds cool and confident, because he is.  There’s more to poker than just the math, and there’s more to _now_ than just the poker.  

The way her head tilts is slight—barely noticeable.  The squint in her eyes is hardly there, but it _is_ there, and he can see it.  He can see the way that she can’t see him.  “Honestly, Gordon, if you’ve gone and wasted those words on some sort of _poker trick_ , I will personally—”

“Nah,” he says.  “I, like, _really_ love you, I think.”

“And you chose to tell me this now because—?”

“Because you went all in,” he says.  “I’m just calling the bet.”

She groans.

“Yeah, sounded less cheesy in my head—your move.”

“Check.”

“Check.”

And they lay it all out on the table, cards exposed, math abandoned, the odds finally falling and—

She has the better hand, but only on a technicality.  Really, she has nothing, but her cards are mostly red and his cards are mostly black, and he really should’ve known she was bluffing.

The room dissolves into a chorus of _Penelope Won_  or, more specifically, a chorus of _Gordon Didn’t Win._ His brother’s go crazy, madness descends, even the birds have flown off, the noise too much to handle.  Amidst the chaos, though, Penelope still sits at the other end of the table, and it’s that first kind of smile, now.  The kind he likes.  The kind he maybe even loves.  She’s smiling at him like he’s the only one in the world, and she digs up a card from one of the discarded piles before her, and she sticks it, face up, against her forehead.

The Queen of Hearts.  He smiles right back.


End file.
